


A Beautiful Thing

by effloresico



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Inspired by The Walking Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-09 23:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10423971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effloresico/pseuds/effloresico





	

I.

She’s not afraid of hurricanes, but Tyreese is. And if he’s crying, Sasha is too. There’s not a thing in the world that’s going to make them different. Sharing tears, they’re drawn to their parent’s bedroom by their father’s radio hum. Even in sleep, he listens—but reports of increasing rainfall and faster winds seem redundant when the real thing’s pounding against the windows and tugging at the foundation of their home. Tyreese clambers onto the bed, tugs Sasha up after him, and nestles into the cocoon of their parents. Their mother’s arms slide around them both like a reflex and instantly, Tyreese settles. Yet Sasha remains awake, staring at the ceiling as lightning sets the room ablaze. It’s like magic, this invisible, provisional fire. If only Sasha believed in magic. But her daddy, a man built from practicality by twenty years in the army, taught her better. And it’s not luck that’s going to keep their house standing, she decides: it’s the architectural designing by her mother, an engineer, a woman of meticulous preparation. In the midst of a hurricane, it’s the safest she’s ever felt, tucked between people mattering most. And it’s the safest she’ll ever feel.

 

II.

Seven months. Sasha hesitates before making the mark, just another tally in a line of over two hundred. Seven _months_ —since the biters took over the firehouse, since David’s lifeblood spilled across the driveway, since she last saw her mother, since the bunker door first closed… She rolls the pencil, worn down to an inch, between graphite-stained fingertips. She’s marking the days the best she’s able, but there isn’t a note of when she last tasted fresh air. Or when her father, once the radio went dead and he couldn’t stand the silence, set out into the world. And she didn’t mark the day they stopped looking to the door at every sound, expecting his return. Or the day she first truly, completely understood what hunger felt like as more meals were skipped to stretch the supplies. Just endless tallies… She can’t complain though, not when there are others to think about. Tyreese, Luke, Daisy, and Jerry... She’s silent as she feels the latter step up behind her—too close. Always too close. But she won’t say anything when it comes to him, his wild tirades, his wandering hands. He’s offered this sanctuary. He can take it away.

 

III.

 _This is it_. She won’t starve or fall prey to a walker bite—not like so many others. Sasha’s going to be gunned down alongside her brother in the community she thought was the answer…gunned down by a man who fears the living more than the dead. Her throat constricts as the Governor reaches for a rifle. Instinctually, she grabs Tyreese’s arm. Her brother’s soft-spoken compromise to stay and defend the children hangs in the air. After everything—being starved out of the bunker, the short-lived camp in the woods, the weeks of endless wandering, and near-primal attempts at survival—she’s going to be gunned down for refusing to take up arms alongside the rest, for refusing to fight against those she knows aren’t a threat. She’s met the prison group. Their leader’s unhinged, but they have a _baby_. An old man without a leg. Not that it matters, though. The biters are the ones to fight. But the governor only presses the gun into Tyreese’s chest and walks away. _Thank you_ , he says, his reptilian stare promising annihilation. He’d seemed charismatic enough when he welcomed them to Woodbury—but she does remember seeing venom in his eyes then, too.

 

IV.

She learned long ago that in the new world, nothing’s permanent. But that’s alright. What she has now, whatever it is, is good. It’s the good out of the bad—stuck in this church, nowhere else to go, but it’s warm. Dry. She’s curled up against a pew and watching Judith giggle on her father’s lap. A warmth grows in Sasha’s chest, and it’s something she’s been feeling more and more often lately. Maybe it has something to do with the man sitting beside her. Touching her, loving her. Sharing his wine. From across the church, Abraham makes his way to the altar and lifts his glass. _I’d like to propose a toast_ , he announces. But Sasha’s only half-listening. She’s leaning on Bob’s shoulder—carefully, though, as he’s been favoring it since the foodbank—and thinking about all it’s taken to get her to this place. The fall of Woodbury, the prison, Terminus… So many of the faces around her, she thought she’d never see again—and she’d been so close to leaving on her own, all to avoid the hurt she was sure she’d find. But things are changing now. In her head, her heart. Things are good.

 

V.

She grew up in his shadow, and now he’s being laid to rest in hers. It’s too much too quickly—Sasha can’t breathe. Can’t see straight. Standing at the edge of Tyreese’s grave, she feels weak. The world spins and Daryl’s passing her the shovel, but her grip’s too loose and the spade wilts. Clods of dirt fall from the blade and sprinkle onto her shoes; they’ll stay there for weeks, and every time she brushes a bit of soil out from underneath the laces, she’ll think of how for the very first time, Tyreese looked _small_. She tries to bury him like a sister in this new world should, but she can’t. Can’t hold a shovel, can’t hold a knife. She trips backwards, away from the grave. Weeds catch her around the ankles, and Father Gabriel’s faltering eulogy catches on every feather-light footstep as she darts away. It’s not happening if she can’t hear it, right? Wrong. Stupid. It doesn’t matter what she does, or whatever anyone does. A eulogy means nothing to dead ears, and a gravestone doesn’t make a difference. Tyreese goes the same way her Bob did: quietly, softly, and without her to help him rest.

 

VI.

Nights are spent in the Alexandria clock-tower, leaning lightly against rough wooden walls and holding her rifle close. _I think I want to die_. She’s been thinking it since her brother settled beneath the earth, but now, finally, she says it aloud. Softly, as though the stars aren’t quite ready to hear her secret. She whispers it to the trees, out in the woods where she flees from the walls of a suburban delusion. She cries it to the walkers, to their limp carcasses as she piles them in a mass grave christened with the blood from her blistered palms. Will they take her in? She stares down at the heap and begs her question while envy burns in the hollow of her stomach. Is there room for one more in their shuffling herds? They don’t dream of Egyptian cotton or gleaming pasta makers; they don’t dream at all. And she lays amongst them, feeling their bones on her bones as she leans back onto the bed of fetid flesh. Their hair in her hair, their stiff fingers at her back. They don’t breathe, don’t moan, don’t move. They’re still. Deader than dead. And she’s ready to be, too.

 

VII.

He’s smart, but acts like an idiot. He’s insensitive. Animalistic and cocksure: a real ass. But Abraham is as she once was—out of control, desperate, drowning, _furious_. And she gets it… Or, some of it. She understands the way he can’t sit still, why he can’t let things go. She was there too, and she stands across from him on her front porch, sees the way he’s reaching out—he’s trying. And she’s still fighting the same demons; she’s still trying too. Oh, but God, Abe’s moving faster than she is and she crumbles with the fear of it. Not of him, but of herself and wounds not wholly healed. Her voice wavers, but she gets the words out: _come inside_. They’ve got choices, this is a choice. She prays she’s making the right one. It feels like it, with skin on skin, and hands lost in hair. He’s patient, he’s gentle. He pulls her to his chest as they stumble up the stairs, and she feels safe. He makes her smile, makes her laugh. Happiness is coming back. She feels the ground underneath their feet, and Sasha suddenly understands: there’s a difference between living and surviving—he’s it.


End file.
